Letters: Mattawan Middle School students tackle water, air pollution

The following letters to the editor that was sent to the Kalamazoo Gazette by students at Mattawan Middle School.

SARAH HARROP/Mattawan

Every year 230 million tons of trash generated in the U.S. Cities are running out of places to put their garbage. We need to stop the overflow of solid waste because, there are risks if we burn it, bury it and moving its location is pointless.

Solid waste is household garbage that is overflowing and polluting our home. According to the U.S Environmental Protection Agency,”landfills close for one of two reasons. They are either full or polluting groundwater." So what should we do to reduce solid waste? Most of the time people bury or move the landfill. Moving the location is useless because it can pollute the new location. Burning the garbage is another choice, but burning releases toxins into the air that can be harmful to people and other creatures. Burning it turns it to ashes this is disposed in hazardous waste landfills. Once again the solution makes another problem.

About 4.6 pounds of solid waste per person is generated per day. Right now we are part of the problem not the solution. About 70 percent of waste can be reduced and recycled. We can reduce solid waste by: picking up trash and not littering. Also something easy like reusing a water bottle. You can also recycle plastic, paper and glass.

CELIA SCHIPPER/Mattawan

You might not think of the beloved Kalamazoo river as a hazard to your health when in fact, 9 million cubic yards of soil and sediment in the river are laden with PCB’s. polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB) is a chemical that was disposed into the river by a nearby paper mill. PCB’s can cause reproductive and neurological disorders in humans and animals. It is even a suspected cause of cancer. The polluted Kalamazoo River is hazardous to the community because it contains very harmful PCB’s.

We should be concerned about these PCBs because by simply canoeing or kayaking in the river, you could expose yourself to these PCBs. People in the city are just adding to the harm by not spreading the word about harmful PCBs. Don’t worry though, you can help in many ways. You could raise awareness about the issue, or you could donate to helpful organizations that help dispose of PCBs, or you could be a part of it yourself and join a clean-up crew. The Kalamazoo Watershed Council is a great organization that helps with this issue. Their website is http://kalamazooriver.org if you wanted to check it out. Spread the word about PCBs.

DOMINICK GOETTING/Mattawan

Have you ever seen the factories that have smoke coming out of them? Well that smoke is bad for the environment because it can cause air pollution. Air pollution is bad for the environment because air pollution can cause lung cancer, and it can kill people and animals.

Air pollution is when smoke or car exhaust goes into the air and damages it, a side effect from air pollution is acid rain. Acid rain is when the air pollution gets into the ozone layer and pollutes the rain fall. Factories, nuclear power plants, and cars cause air pollution. When a company chops down a tree they’re destroying the only source of clean air.

We should be concerned because air pollution causes pneumonia which is a lung infection that makes it harder to breath and it could kill you. It also causes lung cancer that kills people everyday. A way to reduce or stop the problem is that we should put filters inside the pipes of the factory tower that smoke comes out of and that should slow down the pollution and whenever you cut down a tree plant another one because tree help make the air breathable.

So when you see smoke from a factory or exhaust from a car think twice about air pollution.

NIKO STAMAS/Mattawan

Kalamazoo has a major water pollution problem. Oil and PCBs have spilled in the Kalamazoo river and has been spreading. Water pollution is the worst problem in Kalamazoo and people should be scared because, it is killing fish and other animals, if anyone drinks the water they could become ill, and lastly PCBs causes cancer, and PCBs are in the water.

PCBs are a chemical that have been in the Kalamazoo River for a long time, and now just recently there has been a oil spill in the river. More than 800,000 gallons of oil spilled, spreading 30 miles along the river. It was caused by failures of Enbridge Energy. They should have been more careful. They didn’t check the pipes to make sure that there were no opening.

Luckily the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) helped clean up most of the oil and PCBs from the river. Despite their efforts there is still gallons of PCB and oil in the Kalamazoo river. We can help by volunteering our time with the EPA to assist clean the river. Enbridge Energy and other companies that move oil should be more careful about moving oil.

MICHELLE KONING/Mattawan

Soil pollution is one of the worst environmental issues in the world. I would like to point out that in Mattawan, we have so many beautiful places. What would happen if shops started dumping all of their garbage in the ground and didn’t care that they are killing all the flora and fauna around them? Also, polluters are putting toxic waste where they get their drinking water and growing If we told people about this, we wouldn't have to worry.

Soil pollution is when human-made chemicals or other contaminants gets in the soil. Would you want that stuff in the ground where you plant your food and get your water? You may have a aquifers, but you can’t always rely on machines. Some people and businesses that are not disposing of their garbage properly and are not recycling, or even trying to help. Something we can do to help, is recycle all the plastics that we don’t need. All businesses can reuse all the plastic that they don’t need. We should do this because pollution is hurting the plants and animals, we need to start this before this gets out of hand.

SARAH LIGHTLE/Kalamazoo

Water pollution is a big problem and there are many ways that we can fix it. Water pollution is when chemicals and and other toxins get into the water. Water pollution needs to be stopped because animals are dyingr, that could be very bad for our environment.

Other people are adding to this problem by they are littering and the trash gets into the water. Next people are going on cruises and the gas from the big boats is going into the water. More problems are that we cook, clean, go to the bathroom, all of that goes to the water that people want to swim in. We should tell people about this problem so they can do something about it.

Some things we should do to addres the problem: We should not go on so many cruises. If we hurt the water so much the kids and families will not be able to swim in the water. We should have fundraisers for people to learn about what they are doing to their water. People should be worried because someday they may not be able to swim in the water.

LIZZY KUCH/Mattawan

Pollution is everywhere you look from at the beach to the park, to even factories nearby. We should stop pollution because it can kill animals, it's terrible for the environment and every year 1.2 trillion gallons of untreated sewage, storm water, and industrial waste is dumped into U.S. waters. Pollution can be in many forms such as air pollution, water pollution to people just not cleaning up their litter. Air pollution is pollution of the atmosphere. Air pollution can also lead to global warming. Some factories burn things and it goes off into the air and pollutes areas all over and people can get sick from it. Water pollution is the pollution of the water in rivers, ponds or lakes. If someone is at the beach and has a lunch there, they might forget something and leave it there. Sometimes birds can carry things into the water making our great lake polluted! Not only does the lake get polluted but animals can choke or swallow garbage and could hurt them.

We are contributing to this issue by not cleaning up what we have made a mess of. We need to take responsibility of the mess we make. The environment need our help and needs to be cleaned up! We cannot let our environment get dirty. What if in 20 years we see a sign saying “no swimming allowed” in Lake Michigan because we didn't do our job and clean up.

We can reduce the problem of litter and garbage everywhere if can start doing simple things like making sure trash cans have tops on them and then maybe we can start doing bigger things like getting churches and youth groups help in and do a day of cleaning our area. We need to stop this problem before its too late.